86 LETTER. FR.OM WASHINGTON I '\ '.. _I Fff A J> \ " è(-P ... .,' 'fr, vz -, f ' ,J I "\ I .. 'I / ":::::=:::::- -.Q. JANUARY 23 W HEN he took office a year and a half ago, Gerald Ford profit- ed-at least in public esteem- from a number of negative virtues: the several ways in which he was unlike Richard Nixon and, for that matter, Lyndon Johnson. He was unabrasive, unassuming, and, except in partisan rhetoric, unaggressive. After years of Presidential glibness and dissembling, his very inarticulateness seemed to carry a promise of honesty, and the promise seemed fulfilled when, in his first State of the Union Message, he said, "The state of the Union is not good.... I've got bad news, and I don't ex- pect much... applause." Demagogy and the art of the coverup require, among other things, a kind of verbal adroitness that Ford conspicuously lacked. He appeared to be tempera- mentally incapable of the deviousness, the shiftiness, of the two Presidents be- fore hIm. As Minority Leader of the House, he had sought not to dominate his colleagues but, rather, to be what he liked to describe as a "team player"-a political organization man. He had done some rather shoddy things, such as call- ing for the impeachment of William O. Douglas in retaliation for the Sen- ate's rejection of two of Nixon's nomi- nees for the Supreme Court, and some frivolous, irresponsible ones, such as seeking funds for a House investigation ) 1 \_ 4 , / ' ... , '\ , "' '\... 4 \ ( - I \ 1 I -- ,....<-. , , -- ( , ._-, -- \ '- r# . - >' ' \ . t jta w)ttÍÁ \ \ , of unidentified flying objects in Michi- gan after Air Force investigators had reported them to be easily identifiable swamp gases. No one, though, had ever accused him of tampering with the electoral process. He was, of course, ambitious in the way that most poli- ticians are, but he had no discernible lust for power. In 1964, he had hoped to be tapped as Barry Goldwater's running mate, and It waS said that if the Republicans ever gained control of the House he very much wanted to serve as Speaker. But he was never really active in pursuit of any posi- tIon higher than the one he had held for a decade before being appoint- ed Vice-President in 1973, and a few months before Nixon chose him he had been talking about an early retire- ment. At the time, his views and his record were known to very few except here and in Michigan. He was about as far to the right as any of his colleagues in the House, and had supported every Nixon policy, but since he had never been publicly identified with either wing of his party, it was widely as- sumed that he stood somewhere in the middle. And in a political, as distinct from an ideological, sense he did, for he construed his role as Minority Lead- er to be essentIally that of a mediator: one took up a position between the fac- tions and sought only to represent what they had in common. - '\ - "" s-- - '" \\\\ "' ,II T .. : : ' i \: ( 4 l d/ . \ :-- ." ./ (-i/\ /' " '\ " '-.. ((It was Grampa Higgins, God bless him, who started the company. No, wait a minute, it was Grampa Pear- son, God bless him, who started the company. Grampa Higgins, God bless him, started the bank." \ Recent opInIon polls have varied somewhat in their findings on Ford's standing, particularly vis-à-vis other possible candidates, but there seems lIttle doubt that he currently holds the confidence of only a minority of the people, and perhaps only a minority of Republicans. A Gallup poll taken last month reported overall approval of him at thirty-nine per cent, and a more re- cent Harris poll shows the same per- centage of the public registering doubt whether "he has the intelligence and the qualifications to be a first-rate Presi- dent" and fifty per cent expressing agreement with the proposition that "he does not seem to be very smart about the issues the country is facing." In a random sampling of more than five hundred Republicans in SIxty-two Iowa precincts earlier this week, the Presi- dent led Ronald Reagan by only six- teen votes-and this in a Midwestern state whose Republican leaders have been very much on his side. If he is nominated in Kansas City in August, and if he wins in November, it will be a tribute to the ad vantages of incum beney and to little else, for none of his major policies, foreign or domestic, have ma- jority support in the Congress or in the country. Moreover, some of the quali- tIes of character that were so well re- ceived after five years of Nixon have become wasting assets. For example, Ford, despite the widespread disen- chantment caused by his early pardon of his patron and predecessor, is still regarded by many as the restorer of integrity to the executive branch. ("1 think that he brought candor and in- tegrity to the office," Senator Lowell W eicker, a Connecticut Republican of- ten at odds with the Administration, said at a news conference ten days ago.) But in 1976 this does not count for as much as it did in 1973, when, according to a Harris survey, forty- three per cent of the electorate consid- ered it one of the two most important natIonal issues, the other being the state of the economy; in late 1974, with Nixon in San Clemente and Ford in the Oval Office, the percentage dropped by just about half, and in late 1 975 it was down to seventeen. There is now more " d d "" concern over taxes an spen lng, and traits like modesty and lack of abrasiveness are of slight utility in deal- ing with such matters. Also, some of the perceptions that people had of Ford eighteen months ago have turned out to be misperceptions. He may be no match for Nixon or Johnson in vin- dictiveness, but he is by no means free of it. Having described his dismIssal of Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger as a step toward tIghter and more or-